Description:

Seminar Title:

Intersection of the Herpes Simplex Virus Genome with Neuronal Innate Immune Signaling Pathways

Speaker: Anna Cliffe, PhD, University of Virginia

Host: Derek Walsh, PhD

Topic:

Herpes simplex virus establishes a latent infection of neurons, where it persists for life and periodically reactivates to cause disease. During latency, the viral episome assembles into silent heterochromatin, which is reversed for reactivation to occur. A focus of the Cliffe lab is to understand how viral gene silencing occurs in neurons, how the nature of gene silencing is influenced by external signals and how silencing is reversed for reactivation to occur. Work presented will include new findings from my lab demonstrating that IL-1 stimulates neurons to enter a hyperexcitable state and induces HSV to reactivate, indicating that the virus has hijacked an innate immune signaling pathway for reactivation. This is in contrast to a role for type I interferon in promoting a very restricted form of HSV latency that is refractory to reactivation. This work highlights how specific innate immune signaling pathways in neurons differentially regulate HSV latency and reactivation.